5 ms·

This is just an absurd statement. Do you really think that somone is sitting in some cubical thinking, “Geez, how can I regulate purchase of ballpoint pens?” or

This is just an absurd statement. Do you really think that somone is sitting in some cubical thinking, “Geez, how can I regulate purchase of ballpoint pens?” or anything else? That’s not how laws and regulations come about. I really wish someone would point to an example where any “freedom stealing” law in a democracy was the came from a bureaucrat rather than outside lobbyists. Because the way this common claptrap implies that somewhere there’s a big board where there’s a monthly quota on new regulations and laws, or there’s some other personal incentive.

esoterica 7y ago
> This is just an absurd statement. It's par for the course for internet libertarianism. They have a thirteen year old's YA-dystopian-fiction-novel understanding of how society works.
- dang 7y ago
  Would you please not post name-calling comments or personal attacks (like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20809349 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20809349 and, worse, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20709280 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20709280) to HN? We ban accounts that break the site guidelines like that. If you'd review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and post only in the intended spirit or not at all, we'd be grateful.
  - kragen 7y ago
    While obviously I don't agree with the comment you're responding to (cf. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20813149 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20813149), I wanted to ask you if there's a way I could have phrased the comment it was responding to to be less inflammatory. I didn't anticipate that it would provoke such responses, and I wonder if there's a way to avoid it other than just silence.
    - nkurz 7y ago
      You are asking Dan, but answering from the bleachers: I think it's mostly just the length. If you write a short and direct comment that people are likely to disagree with, you invite short, direct and disagreeable answers. If instead your 'meatier' response to 'psychometry' (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20813149 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20813149) had been part of the original, I think the responses might have been higher quality as well. It's not that short and direct comments are inherently bad, just that as early responses they can set a tone that discourages productive conversation. In any case, I appreciate your opinions and would be disappointed if you revert to silence.
      - kragen 7y ago
        Thank you!
      - javert 7y ago
        This might be helpful for me, too. I often make very short comments because I want to be direct and get to the point.
    - dang 7y ago
      Sorry I didn't see this earlier; am traveling this week and less on top of things. Are you asking about https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20812948 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20812948? I think the trouble was that it admits too many interpretations, some of which (e.g. "dumb ideological boilerplate") are provocative, and users have a strong tendency to leap to a provocative interpretation if one is open. Or rather, probably every possible interpretation of your comment lands with some readers, but the ones who hear the provocative interpretation have a stronger tendency be provoked into replying—often in a fashion that is nastier than the original perceived provocation, because they feel like you "started it". Many readers are locked and loaded for such responses to begin with, and since firing back provides a certain release, they don't tend to scrutinize the text they're reacting to very closely to see if it really does say what they're reacting to, or what other interpretations there might be. The HN guidelines specifically ask users to do the latter ("Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize."), but that requires a slower reflective process than is available in the locked-and-loaded case. This is compatible with what nkurz said, because shorter comments admit of more interpretations. It also implies a mitigation that, in practice, seems to work: include disambiguating information to rule out provocative interpretations. The more provocative a possible interpretation is, the more flame retardant you probably need to pack with your message. This sucks, because it makes you responsible for deflecting things you don't mean, which can be a tedious and political way to communicate. In practice, though, if you really aren't issuing a provocation (e.g. dumb ideological boilerplate), it often suffices to share more of your thought process, especially anything unusual or unpredictable about it, and that tends to make for a more interesting comment too.
ryacko 7y ago
Have you read FDA regulations on food labels? Flavor has to be at least printed in a twelve point font. It may be started by lobbyists, but bureaucrats while drafting something will come up with some good ideas of their own.
- jonathankoren 7y ago
  Responding to the technical merits of a 12 point font: From what I remember as a high school yearbook editor, 12 point is standard text font size. (Yes, I know MS Word popularized 10 point.) Failing to specify a minimum legible font size would allow someone to print labels that were illegible thus defeating the purpose of disclosures, while maintaining technical compliance. It is an unreasonable expectation that people when purchasing food products at a grocery store to carry a 200x microscope. Given that you want to ensure legibility, I would certainly hope that a regulation would exist that specified what was legible was for say 90+% of the sighted population, and was still accessible to technological pocket readers for the blind. In a related example, the FDA respecified nutrition labels due to lobbying about its illegibility and confusing layout. Now it’s larger, high constraint, and has simpler headings around total sugar. I remember when they changed, and it was due to successful lobbying from consumer, health, and senior citizen advocates. You can read about the history of nutrition labeling at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK209859/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK209859/ Now to respond to the point that bureaucrats are incentivized to minimize freedom. What freedom is being minimized? The freedom to deceive consumers? The freedom to obscure? These aren’t really freedoms in the public interest. More importantly, you even conceded that the regulation was started by lobbyists, when the original argument was the a bureaucrat was being “incentivized” to steal Freedom(tm) from the populace. Laws aren’t just vague ideas. They’re technical specifications. Sometimes these specifications are at odds with each other. Sometimes they’re over broad, or ineffective at achieving the original goal. Sometimes they’re simple regulatory capture, (Barber and hairdresser licensure does little to protect the public, but limits the number of practitioners. Same with revoking barber licenses for felons. But do you know who is the biggest supporter of cosmetology licenses? Cosmetologists.) Even the regulators know this, but simultaneously are powerless do anything about it, as they are not the ones who pass the laws. For instance, SF Planning commission famously posted this video about trying to open a restaurant in San Francisco: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOreHYVTHGA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOreHYVTHGA There is more evidence that police have ticket quotas than there is that bureaucrats have regulation quotas. (Show me a beat cop that still has his job after refusing to write any tickets, but rather simply uses his professional discretion to give verbal warnings.)

esoterica 7y ago

> This is just an absurd statement. It's par for the course for internet libertarianism. They have a thirteen year old's YA-dystopian-fiction-novel understanding of how society works.

dang 7y ago
Would you please not post name-calling comments or personal attacks (like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20809349 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20809349 and, worse, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20709280 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20709280) to HN? We ban accounts that break the site guidelines like that. If you'd review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and post only in the intended spirit or not at all, we'd be grateful.
- kragen 7y ago
  While obviously I don't agree with the comment you're responding to (cf. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20813149 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20813149), I wanted to ask you if there's a way I could have phrased the comment it was responding to to be less inflammatory. I didn't anticipate that it would provoke such responses, and I wonder if there's a way to avoid it other than just silence.
  - nkurz 7y ago
    You are asking Dan, but answering from the bleachers: I think it's mostly just the length. If you write a short and direct comment that people are likely to disagree with, you invite short, direct and disagreeable answers. If instead your 'meatier' response to 'psychometry' (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20813149 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20813149) had been part of the original, I think the responses might have been higher quality as well. It's not that short and direct comments are inherently bad, just that as early responses they can set a tone that discourages productive conversation. In any case, I appreciate your opinions and would be disappointed if you revert to silence.
    - kragen 7y ago
      Thank you!
    - javert 7y ago
      This might be helpful for me, too. I often make very short comments because I want to be direct and get to the point.
  - dang 7y ago
    Sorry I didn't see this earlier; am traveling this week and less on top of things. Are you asking about https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20812948 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20812948? I think the trouble was that it admits too many interpretations, some of which (e.g. "dumb ideological boilerplate") are provocative, and users have a strong tendency to leap to a provocative interpretation if one is open. Or rather, probably every possible interpretation of your comment lands with some readers, but the ones who hear the provocative interpretation have a stronger tendency be provoked into replying—often in a fashion that is nastier than the original perceived provocation, because they feel like you "started it". Many readers are locked and loaded for such responses to begin with, and since firing back provides a certain release, they don't tend to scrutinize the text they're reacting to very closely to see if it really does say what they're reacting to, or what other interpretations there might be. The HN guidelines specifically ask users to do the latter ("Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize."), but that requires a slower reflective process than is available in the locked-and-loaded case. This is compatible with what nkurz said, because shorter comments admit of more interpretations. It also implies a mitigation that, in practice, seems to work: include disambiguating information to rule out provocative interpretations. The more provocative a possible interpretation is, the more flame retardant you probably need to pack with your message. This sucks, because it makes you responsible for deflecting things you don't mean, which can be a tedious and political way to communicate. In practice, though, if you really aren't issuing a provocation (e.g. dumb ideological boilerplate), it often suffices to share more of your thought process, especially anything unusual or unpredictable about it, and that tends to make for a more interesting comment too.

ryacko 7y ago

Have you read FDA regulations on food labels? Flavor has to be at least printed in a twelve point font. It may be started by lobbyists, but bureaucrats while drafting something will come up with some good ideas of their own.

jonathankoren 7y ago
Responding to the technical merits of a 12 point font: From what I remember as a high school yearbook editor, 12 point is standard text font size. (Yes, I know MS Word popularized 10 point.) Failing to specify a minimum legible font size would allow someone to print labels that were illegible thus defeating the purpose of disclosures, while maintaining technical compliance. It is an unreasonable expectation that people when purchasing food products at a grocery store to carry a 200x microscope. Given that you want to ensure legibility, I would certainly hope that a regulation would exist that specified what was legible was for say 90+% of the sighted population, and was still accessible to technological pocket readers for the blind. In a related example, the FDA respecified nutrition labels due to lobbying about its illegibility and confusing layout. Now it’s larger, high constraint, and has simpler headings around total sugar. I remember when they changed, and it was due to successful lobbying from consumer, health, and senior citizen advocates. You can read about the history of nutrition labeling at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK209859/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK209859/ Now to respond to the point that bureaucrats are incentivized to minimize freedom. What freedom is being minimized? The freedom to deceive consumers? The freedom to obscure? These aren’t really freedoms in the public interest. More importantly, you even conceded that the regulation was started by lobbyists, when the original argument was the a bureaucrat was being “incentivized” to steal Freedom(tm) from the populace. Laws aren’t just vague ideas. They’re technical specifications. Sometimes these specifications are at odds with each other. Sometimes they’re over broad, or ineffective at achieving the original goal. Sometimes they’re simple regulatory capture, (Barber and hairdresser licensure does little to protect the public, but limits the number of practitioners. Same with revoking barber licenses for felons. But do you know who is the biggest supporter of cosmetology licenses? Cosmetologists.) Even the regulators know this, but simultaneously are powerless do anything about it, as they are not the ones who pass the laws. For instance, SF Planning commission famously posted this video about trying to open a restaurant in San Francisco: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOreHYVTHGA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOreHYVTHGA There is more evidence that police have ticket quotas than there is that bureaucrats have regulation quotas. (Show me a beat cop that still has his job after refusing to write any tickets, but rather simply uses his professional discretion to give verbal warnings.)